The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,68

bad. He was worse off than he thought. He was hallucinating—and even worse—the brown rash was starting to move.

The giggles increased into wild bursts of laughter.

The scent of molasses was strong in his nose. The taste sweet on his lips. He licked them again, amazed at how strong his memory had become. Then he turned his head and spit. This was wrong. Molasses didn’t have seeds.

The crawling sensation was making him crazy. He sat up with a groan and slapped at his pants near his knee. The crawling was worse now. Swaying where he sat, he bent his knee and pulled up his pants, just to make sure it was absent of snakes. To his dismay, the dancing brown rash was down there as well.

“Oh lordy,” he muttered. “I been poisoned, that’s what. I been poisoned and I’m a’ goin’ to die.”

A tiny pain shot behind his ear, then in the bush of beard below his chin. He crawled to his feet and started toward the street. Maybe Matt Goslin had something in his store that would help cure his rash.

He stumbled. Something crashed against the wall. He looked down, frowning at a jug laying in the dirt. It was too small for whiskey and too large for liniment. He picked it up, lifting it to his nose—just in case he’d been wrong about the whiskey part.

To his surprise, the molasses smell was even stronger. He poked his finger into the narrow neck. It came away covered in thick, brown syrup… and ants. He could see them now. Crawling out of the lip of the jug and down the sides like little soldiers on the march.

It took a few moments—and another pain down his neck—for reality to sink in. He looked at the trio of tow-head boys peeking around the corner of the building and knew it wasn’t a rash he was suffering. Coupled with their hysterical giggles and the contents of the molasses jug that they’d poured onto his person, he’d knew he’d been had.

“You little devils,” he shrieked. They’d used him for bait. He came out of the alley, shedding clothes as he ran.

His coat fell at the feet of the blacksmith’s wife as he staggered across her path. She screamed and danced sideways as the coat hit her shoes.

Still on the move, his hat and shirt were the next to go as they landed in the middle of the street. A rancher’s daughter took one look at Eulis’s white hairy belly, still crawling with ants and started to laugh.

By the time he got to the watering trough in front of the livery, he was clawing at his hair and his beard. Desperate to stop the stings, he went in face first, landing with a belly flop and sending a spray of water high into the air. Moments later, he came up gasping and looked down. Hundreds of ant carcasses were floating on the water. He sat down in the trough, groaning in pain and disbelief as Pete Samuels, the owner of the livery, came out on the run.

“Eulis, dang your hide. That ain’t no place to take a bath.”

“Ain’t bathin’,” Eulis muttered, while combing his fingers through the sticky gunk in his hair and face.

“Then what the hell are you doin’?” he shouted.

Eulis pointed. “Ants.”

Pete gawked. Sure enough, the surface of the water was littered with them. It didn’t take long for the three laughing boys and the stench of a sweetened down Eulis to make things more clear. He shook his head. Those little dickens had sure caused a stir, pouring molasses on a passed-out drunk.

“Well, get the damned things off and then fill up my trough with clean water, you hear?”

Eulis nodded. “Be glad to,” he offered. “Just as soon as I pick the rest of these ants out of my beard. Durn things sting hard, don’t you know?”

Pete went back into his livery, muttering to himself.

Eulis continued to pick off the ants, splashing himself now and then with the murky green water and heartily glad he hadn’t been forced to shed his pants. His last pair of long johns had fallen apart last winter. He’d been doing without ever since.

Alfonso Worthy was on his way to Sophie’s house for supper. But it wasn’t the thought of her food that was hurrying his steps, it was the telegram he had in his pocket. The preacher was coming with the next wagon of freight. He could hardly wait. Not until he heard Sophie Hollis say the